Memorial Update

9/22/25

Good Morning Memorial Families,

I hope that it was a great weekend. I spent Saturday at the Big E in Springfield, and though crowded, my daughters and I had the best time trying all of the amazing food and beverage options across the fairgrounds. Fall is definitely in the air!

On Friday afternoon, after we dismissed your children, Memorial teachers spent the afternoon looking at student writing from this past year’s MCAS assessments and working on continuing to develop our writing instruction. We are starting to see some growth showing up in the state testing in the area of writing and we are excited to continue to develop it this year. One thing we are noticing is the expectation for our students to engage with longer texts and then be able to demonstrate their understanding in depth through written expression. There are so many skills wrapped up in the process of reading and then responding to literature through writing. We are hard at work building our students stamina for reading and writing across the school day. As we mentioned at open house last week, you can really support literacy develoment at home by encouraging family reading time, modeling sustained reading for longer stretches of time, and by having book discussions with your children as they read. So much of life nowadays is snippets, short video clips, and messages full of abbreviations and it can feel like we are fighting an uphill battle to develop a love of reading for fun.

A few items for your attention:

We have swapped the dates of literacy and math night. We will now hold literacy night on November 19th to coincide with our Scholastic Book Fair. Math/STEM Night will be held on January 28th.
We will hold our Cardboard Creation Day on October 31st in the morning. Next week I will include a sign up genius if you want to volunteer to help with this event. It is a lot of fun for the kids! If you are looking to get rid of cardboard boxes, we will gladly accept them for the next few weeks.
Some families have asked about using ST Math at home. We do not send ST Math home during the school year except in a few instances later in the school year for students who may have fallen behind. We utilize it as an in school program as part of our math curriculum. We try to pace the students and limit their screen time with it each day. This also allows us to ensure that the students are completing their journey on their own without adult “hands-on” help.

Have a wonderful week!

Warmly,

Wendy

New this year! A monthly newsletter from our reading specialist, Mrs. Hagen, with tips and information for families about literacy development and strategies.

Click here to read, or find it in the School Newsletter document.